I have been involved with getting Open Victoria up and running since the summer and I am very happy to see that it has reached this point where it has been launched and is endorsing a number of candidates for office in the City of Victoria.I like Open Victoria because it is a different approach to politics. It is not ideologically driven political party, but set of principles and philosophy about how to approach governance.

My political philosophy really is a politics of openness and engagement with the public. I believe that the public needs to be given the information needed to be able to make informed comments to the elected officials. I also believe that elected officials have to be proactive in seeking ways to get the public to engage on issues. If the public is not actively taking part, this has to be seen by the politicians as a failure on their part.

The site has been created to restrict public engagement. Making it easy for the public was not on anyone’s minds. In fact you would be hard pressed to put information online and make it harder to find than how the City of Victoria does it.